Live from Nokia’s CES 2012 press conference

Nokia recently announced its first Windows Phone for the U.S. market late last year — T-Mobile’s Lumia 710 — but the Finnish vendor has a lot more in store. Today, we finally get our first glimpse at Nokia’s flagship smartphone that is set to launch on AT&T in the near future. The Lumia 900 or Ace, as it is rumored to be named on AT&T, reportedly shares the same look and feel as the Lumia 800 but it packs two big new features: 4G LTE, and a bigger form factor along with a larger display. Are the rumors right? Does Nokia have any other surprises in store? Hit the break for our live coverage of Nokia’s press conference.

6:41PM:That’s it folks! Thanks for joining us.

6:41PM:Someone asked about Nokia’s interest in buying RIM. “We clearly see an opportunity in the B to B marketplace. The Lumia products we have and planned combined with the great services from microsoft such as Microsoft 365, that combo gives us an effective collection of tools to compete with others in the business market.” Sounds like a ‘No.” to us.

6:40PM:Why no NFC? “As we’ve pursued the first devices we had to make priority decisions about what we could include. You can anticipate we’ll include it over time. It’s personally something I believe in.”

6:39PM:Will 4G LTE kill the great battery life of Windows Phone and why doesn’t Nokia use quad-core? “You have a high quality user experience but it doesnt require multiple cores to do that. Quad-core multicore relates to performance as well. The vast amount of time they are just using power and taking battery life down. Our hope is that we can communicate about the experience and show how people’s lives are impacted by bringing their information to the surface of the experience. LTE does have power implications, you’ll notice that the 1830 mAh battery in the Lumia 900 is clearly taking steps in terms of battery configuration, but also we worked with Qualcomm and Microsoft to work on the battery life. The battery life on the Lumia 900 will be very superior to other LTE devices.

6:38PM:Will Nokia enter the tablet market? Nokia believes if it can do what it has with smartphones that it could be a possibility, but really Elop didn’t give a clear answer.

6:36PM:Nokia plans to take advantage of location based services within Nokia Maps to make it a differentiator in the future.

6:36PM:Lots of silly questions like where the mapping software comes from (Nokia acquired NAVTEQ a few years back, so that’s where it comes from).

6:35PM:“It’s our intention to have broad coverage with the Lumia portfolio” and that will happen in 2012. “In the early part of 2012, there’s lots more to come.”

6:34PM:Any plans to push up to 16GB or 32GB of storage? “There’s a lot of work with Microsoft how we can take care of cloud storage in a more efficient way, but we’re certainly considering the requirements as we go forward.”

6:33PM:“We have very specific plans to move down in price point segmentation as well. We will push down with successive product introductions ahead.” Sounds like we’ll hear lower priced devices. “There’s lots still ahead.”

6:32PM:After the European launch, Nokia’s focus is now on marketing and sales.

6:31PM:There’s no pricing as of yet but Nokia’s intention is to enter the market aggressively. Hopefully that means lower-priced devices.

6:31PM:One question about how Nokia might be fragmenting its devices by offering special software (Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, etc). “We do need some elements of differentiation within the ecosystem. We try to strike where we are doing unique experiences but don’t fracture the entire ecosystem. We won’t introduce different APIs that would lead to fragmentation.” – Stephen Elop

6:28PM:One question was about whether Verizon would carry an LTE phone. The answer is that Nokia isn’t announcing that today but clearly they want to deliver LTE devices to as many U.S. consumers as possible, so we can probably expect that.

6:27PM:“We anticipate sales will start in the months immediately ahead. We’re very excited to be partnering with Microsoft and AT&T to bring the Lumia 900 to customers here in the United States. I want to say how wonderful it is to be back in the U.S. with Nokia.” Now we’re moving to Q&A.

6:26PM:“Congratulations Steve, and welcome back!”

6:25PM:“AT&T will be the first carrier to deliver 4G LTE Windows Phones. We are seeing the best of Nokia’s past with the best of its future. Nokia will be back in the U.S. in a very big way. The Lumia will be available in the coming months.”

6:24PM:Stephen Elop is talking again. To share with you a little more and what it means to AT&T and the U.S., Ralph de la Vega will take the stage.

6:24PM:“The work we’re doing will pay off for users, developers, operators and I trust our two companies. I congratulate Nokia and we look forward to exciting a lot of customers with this new product.”

6:23PM:‘When you pick up and touch and love your Lumia… you’ll find it’s a fantastic system.”

6:22PM:Nokia has about 50,000 apps in the Marketplace and it’s ramping up each day. Nokia “got off to a fast start. In a sense, you can say everything seems to take a long time. But we signed a contract to work together less than a year ago at this stage in the game. To go to concept and discussion to real engineering partnership to delivering the first round of Lumia devices is fantastic. The Lumia 900 is another milestone in that path.

6:20PM:Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is taking the stage to discuss more about how the two are partnering.

6:19PM:“We feel like the Lumia 900 really stands out from the smartphone crowd. Thank you.”

6:19PM:Nokia will continue to innovate of ESPN Sports Hub to deliver more features to its users throughout the year. In addition, Nokia has created a panoramic view for the CNN news application. Nokia worked with CNN on iReporter — the largest citizen journalism network in the world — and allows users to go back in time and select the image that they want to submit for their iReport.

6:17PM:We’re going over the People card and live tile stuff now, including built-in Facebook chat. These are features available on other Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) devices, too. Nokia Drive, however, is also included and it’s a solid option for voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation.

6:15PM:“The front has an F 2.4 aperture lens for letting in as much light as the back camera on nearly every other smartphone out there.” This should allow for some pretty solid front-facing video chats.

6:14PM:We’re going over how great the cameras are on the Lumia 900. We’ve typically been impressed with the lenses but we’ll reserve our full judgement until we actually play with one in person. Hopefully we’ll be able to do that soon.

6:12PM:Like the Lumia 800, Lumia 710 and Nokia N9 it has a polycarbonate shell.

6:11PM:Nokia’s Kevin Shields is coming up to give us a demo. “It has a bold, beautiful and balanced design…It was our focus in the U.S. market to really allow us to give birth to the Lumia 900.”

6:10PM:It has Carl Zeiss optics for high quality images as well as a front-facing camera.

6:09PM:It will initially launch in black and cyan. It ahs a 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED display.

6:09PM:It’s Nokia’s first 4G LTE smartphone and it will land exclusively on AT&T. (Sorry Verizon fans!)

6:07PM:Nokia will push head with the sales and marketing of its phones to be “successful in this war.” He’s talking about battles and wars, clearly Nokia wants to fight Android and iOS and fight hard. “So today, I am very pleased to introduce the third device in the Lumia product portfolio, the Nokia Lumia 900.”

6:06PM:Elop is going over how great the Lumia 800 and 710 are be want to hear more about Nokia’s new products.

6:06PM:Today the Lumia is available around the world and on January 11th this week it will begin selling the Lumia 710 here in the U.S. on T-Mobile (be sure to read our full review!).

6:04PM:Elop is going over the global markets that Nokia currently has a presence in. The second pillar of Nokia’s strategy was to focus on its smartphones ( the first was having a global presence). Elop said Nokia decided to adopt Windows Phone to help achieve that effort.

6:02PM:We’re going to talk about Nokia’s re-entry into the U.S. wireless market for about a half of an hour and then it will break into a Q&A. Stephen Elop is taking the stage.

6:01PM:Ok we’re seated pretty close to the front for this one. Looks like we’re going to get started soon. Ready for what’s in store? Our bets are on the Lumia 900.